


Slivers

by jaderabbit (hangnga)



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, Community: ichi_ruki, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-02
Updated: 2009-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 16:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangnga/pseuds/jaderabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"At the moment that Rukia thrust her sword and power into Ichigo's heart, she hoped that he was extraordinary. She didn't give thought to the price of being extraordinary until too late." Twelve sequential 100-word drabbles in Rukia's POV that dig under the surface of Ichigo's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slivers

**Author's Note:**

> Response to the '12 Tortures' challenge on the ichi_ruki LJ community.

**1\. Rain boots - Prompt: Guilt Trip**

If a man's shoes said a lot, what did his childhood rain boots say?

(1) He's a packrat.

Rukia's been sorting junk out from Ichigo's closet for hours. This was his fourth pair of shoes, second boots; though he obviously couldn't wear this pair anymore.

(2) He'd rushed ahead, impetuous.

These boots must have splashed in every puddle, heedless of depth or cold or mud, staining memories of simple freedoms. Now they're badly scuffed, with an ugly grass stain from a hard fall.

She sets the kid boots next to their shiny, adult counterparts.

(3) He's learned to walk carefully.

~

  
_Even Urahara's best gigai couldn't erase the phantom feel of Rukia's zanpaktou by her side. She'll catch herself reaching for it, her fingers twitching to feel the solidness of the hilt, then cramping when they close around nothing but themselves. Yet, she isn't without weapons. Still left to fight are her words, and Ichigo, if she wields those words well. So it is with a tongue well oiled and carefully sharpened the night before that she introduces Ichigo to his new Shinigami duties._   


~

**2\. The Lesson – Prompt: Tongue Lashing**

_A pressure test: throw recruits against lower-ranked Hollows. _

Rukia doesn't care who the soul is that will be attacked.

_Dismiss cowards, list team players, and pay attention to lone fighters._

Rukia doesn't care how –slice, thrust, blow– Ichigo breaks the Hollow's mask.

_Watch faces, not swords._

Ichigo's face is a confusion of power, anger and pain; Rukia does care about why. With powerless fists clenched, she burns this face of his to memory, and then lashes him with her tongue. Reasons to fight are messy, inferior to duty. Emotion a wildcard.

_Never become personally involved in the pressure test._

~

  
_Night played tricks on Rukia's weak gigai eyes, shadowing the bright colour of Ichigo's hair much darker, but human sight didn't prevent Ichigo from seeing more than was good for him._   


~

**3\. Scrubbing Clean –Prompt: Water**

Water runs pink down the drain as Rukia watches Ichigo scrub guilt off his hands.

He'd killed Orihime's brother tonight.

No, purified——that's the approved terminology.

Rukia still prefers to call it killing. Hollows are soul-eating monsters. They have masks, not faces. Killing them is easy.

Ichigo rinses the soap off. Only a sliver remains, but she knows not to ask if there's another bar. Some questions are best left unsaid.

_How many faces does it take until it feels like killing humans, not monsters?_

Her toes curl as he passes her the soap with icy fingers.

_Maybe just one._

~

  
_Rukia's not the right type to teach others. She'd rather just do things herself and have it done quickly. Still, she forces herself to lecture and draw and brainstorm ways to train Ichigo because experience is a much harsher teacher._   


~

**4\. Scream – Prompt: Silent Treatment**

The Hollow brags: a murderous, stalking, child-tormenting fiend. Ichigo rips out its wicked tongue before sending the Hollow to hell.

Such bloodthirsty justice served reason to cheer but Ichigo's quiet as they walk home. Rukia stops talking. She slips inside the empty kitchen behind him and follows his disappearing back upstairs.

Ichigo drops stiffly onto bed.

Rukia opens the closet, then slams it… on Ichigo's fingers, suddenly there, and his other hand cups her jaw.

She's not sorry. "It deserved---"

He presses his thumb against her lips.

Rukia bites. Ichigo bends to nip back.

The bloody kiss settles nothing.

~

  
_Rukia watches Ichigo try to talk with his friends about a show he's never seen. He's laughing and smiling and telling his friends nothing about how close he'd come to dying while they were watching tv. She forces a smile, too, and interrupts him, drawing the group's attention to her for a moment, for at least a moment, and Ichigo is free to drop quietly into his seat._   


~

**5\. Forgotten – Prompt: Humiliation**

Asano runs into them first; Rukia, literally.

Ichigo picks her up and Asano apologizes. "Sorry, uh…"

He's one of Ichigo's friends –very excitable, loud and clingy; ate lunch with them on the school rooftop– but he looks at Rukia blankly. Urahara might've overdone it.

Asano should've been laughing about yesterday, making obscene kissing-faces and hooting until Ichigo socked him, humiliated. Violence would've only encouraged the fool further, and he'd have kept teasing because loyal friends push to get to the truth.

"Uh…"

"Kuchiki, Rukia," she gently reminds him.

Asano brightens with recognition.

Ichigo pushes past them without greeting his friend.

~

  
_Rukia leaves the closet door open just a crack each night, enough to let in the yellow street light from the bedroom window and the sound of Ichigo's breathing. She always finds it shut tight, however, when she wakes._   


~

**6\. The Morning – Prompt: Whipped**

Isshin usually whips Ichigo awake with a morning attack. He'll roll away just in time to avoid it, then dress, eat and leave early.

It's the perfect start to the day.

Unlike the morning Yuzu's soft brush of Ichigo's sleep-tousled hair roused a mumbled _mom_ from his lips. Yuzu's gasp woke Ichigo fully and he'd growled for her to get out. Although Rukia gave Ichigo's stiff form an Isshin-worthy kick to get him out of bed before she headed out the window, he was late.

This morning, however, nobody wakes Ichigo and yet he's the first ready.

He misses school.

~

  
_Rukia had thought she'd known what helplessness was when she'd thrust her zanpaktou into Kaien's heart and felt the Hollow and life fade from his body, until nothing was left inside to animate him anymore and she was left alone to be crushed under the weight of his death. How naive that had been——at least then, she'd been able to do something to end his suffering. Helplessness was standing on a rainy hillside and watching, just watching._   


~

**7\. A Mother's Bond – Prompt: Deprivation**

I don't know you, but I know the people who loved you.

Ichigo remembers. He still mourns you and shoulders the blame alone.

You left him, and I can't fill the emptiness because I don't understand the loss of a mother. I have no memory of my own.

I'm worthless, only bringing death. I send your son to kill monsters to save other people's mothers.

And now, I think I'm sending him to his own death. The price to avenge you.

This is his fight. I can only watch and hope he doesn't follow in your footsteps, leaving me alone.

~

  
_Ichigo's minor cuts and bruises weren't the only injuries Rukia had been unable to heal after he fought the Grand-Fisher Hollow. He wouldn't have allowed her to touch the other injuries, though, even if she'd had the skills to heal them. Some wounds had to scar._   


~

**8\. Frozen – Prompt: Bondage**

For the first time, Rukia's unable to handle death. Surprisingly, it's a stranger's death, but then, it wasn't exactly the dead causing her such turmoil, only the survivor left behind.

He's beaten, inside and out, and looks it.

She's contemplating leaping down to offer a hand or a shoulder or to just kick some sense into him, gently since he's still injured and only if she could get herself to loosen her splintering grip on the tree branch, when his father's arrival surprises them both.

The father pokes him with an umbrella and words, and Rukia silently laughs even though it hurts.

~

  
_Rukia can look someone right in the eye when she lies without a single, betraying blink, but she spends hours practicing her voice before she plays pretend at Ichigo's school and the lies sound like they come from someone else._   


~

**9\. Liar – Prompt: Brainwashing**

Rukia's a liar.

Ichigo suspects her, of course –_slice through the mask; sins erased_– though he's gotten better at hiding the betrayal in his eyes.

When she'd handed him the mod-soul pill, another dirty secret and the last, her look promised trust between them. She'd meant it in that moment, had needed—hoped, but Urahara's warning won't leave her.

_"If trouble comes..."_

Now the mod-soul prances in its stuffed body; physical embodiment of insubordination and the price. Soul Society has sent someone to check up on her.

Trouble is coming.

She'll bury Ichigo in lies if it keeps him hidden.

~

  
_In Rukia's defence, she'd been focused on the danger from Soul Society, and there danger still remained. It just wasn't the only threat to Ichigo's life. She should have remembered from the past that not all enemies wear a mask._  


~

**10\. Fighting Change – Prompt: Bullying/Intimidation**

Bullies seemed mundane compared to Soul Society's enforcers, but the Quincy picking a fight with Ichigo isn't easily dismissed. Ishida's too proud, the downfall of his kind, and he's strong enough to present a real challenge.

Quincy upset the balance.

Change rains down from the sky in more Hollows than the both of them, fated enemies, are capable of handling alone. Together, Ichigo and Ishida stand, back to back, perfect.

In a chilling blink, Rukia can see Hollow masks replaced with zanpaktou and shinigami pouring from the sky. Shivering, shaking off the premonition, she charges.

She won't surrender to change.

~

  
_Rukia didn't fear strength, although she respected it. Soul Society was built upon a system of spiritual power ranking and she was comfortable with her moderate position within it. She realized now that was a perceptual error. She didn't fear strength because she'd never possessed a power that could rip her from the inside out._  


~

**11\. Crushed Will – Prompt: Domination**

"Just watch and see~"

Urahara's iron kidou conflicted with his sing-song voice but the command was clear. Rukia bruised herself fighting its hold, anyway, squeezing ribs, gasping and chest throbbing as Ichigo chopped at the Menos Grand, bounced off.

Urahara laughed. "Look! The Quincy's trying to use Ichigo like a battery." His tone predicted failure.

Rukia tried twisting, crushing her abdomen, stomach heaving as Ichigo tore his zanpaktou free of Ishida's set-up and rushed the Menos Grand alone. The light of Ichigo's strike against cero seared her eyes.

Ichigo dropped to his knees, dominant. Rukia crumpled, head bowed.

She'd lost.

~

  
_Rukia knew that Ichigo would never let her run away to protect him, but that was why she had to try._   


~

**12\. Left Behind – Prompt: The Rack**

Ichigo's nothing like her brother.

As duty dictated, Byakuya became powerful to honour his family. Compassion compelled Ichigo to become strong, even if it meant lying to his family.

Rukia's racked between the two. In streetlight they battle, duty and compassion, ripping her opposite ways. Duty's tie is inflexible; compassion's fastened with more slack. It's obvious which will tear with her.

She kicks free of compassion, stands out of his reach. Drenched in rain and failure, she hides behind duty without revealing her wound.

Could compassion heal, given the torn half of her heart she left behind on the rack?

~

  
END// 

**Author's Note:**

> Fanart by for the first drabble of this set can be found on her deviant page [here](http://twosen.deviantart.com/art/Rain-Boots-65401845), rated G.
> 
> Thanks to raynos for your insight and suggestions to polish up these drabbles. You were immensely helpful! Big thanks also to berrygold and tenebris for your input on earlier drafts. Without everyone's help, I'm not sure if I'd ever had finished this set. Thanks, again ♥


End file.
